Art across the Atlantic

Thursday

Sep 28, 2017 at 2:11 PMSep 28, 2017 at 2:25 PM

British artist Rozanne Hawksley's pieces on display at the Maritime Museum at Battleship Cove

Linda Murphy Lifestyle Editor @HNFastFood

Imagining a meeting between Captain Thomas Coram, a successful Taunton shipbuilder, and composer George Frederic Handel was the inspiration for artist Rozanne Hawksley’s “Captain Coram and Mr. Handel.”

The mixed media piece, recognizing the two men who played a part in changing the fate of mistreated, neglected infants in London in the 18th century, is on display at the Maritime Museum of Greater Fall River along with a few of British artist Hawksley’s other pieces.

A native of Portsmouth, England now living in Pembrokeshire, Wales, the 88-year-old Hawskley is an internationally known artist whose work has been exhibited in England, Wales, Japan and Europe. Known as an innovator for using textiles and embroidery as an art form, Hawksley is one of the featured artists in Rozsika Parker’s book, “The Subversive Stitch: embroidery and the making of the feminine.” Her ground-breaking work in mixed media using embroidery was the focus of a 1988 exhibit, “The Subversive Stitch,” which garnered her international acclaim.

Though her doctor wouldn’t let her make the trip to the United States for an artist’s reception in Fall River, in a recent phone interview Hawksley said she was “delighted” that her Coram piece will be displayed not far from Taunton, where he made his fortune as a shipbuilder in the early 1700s, allowing him to ultimately fund the Foundling Hospital.

Describing the process that led to her creation of the piece, Hawskley said a few factors came together that “spread in my mind like seeds.” Coram was born in the same part of Dorset that Hawksley’s family came from and after seeing a photo of a Hogarth painting of him she started thinking about the deplorable conditions that led mothers to abandon the children they were unable to care for on the streets of London. The sight of those children prompted philanthropist Coram to go through the lengthy process of obtaining a warrant from King George II to build the Foundling Hospital, an orphanage that opened in 1741. Several years later, composer George Frederic Handel composed a piece that he performed in a concert at the hospital’s chapel to support the cause.

In her imaging of a meeting between the two men, each man extends a hand from across the Atlantic Ocean. Coram’s red-cuffed glove holding a tiny skull next to a drawing of his house in Taunton reaches out to Handel’s white lace glove.

Her drawing of the gates of the hospital on the canvas is encircled by a gold wreath, similar to one adorning Handel’s home, and a skeletal hand, symbolizing death, reaches towards the gates.

Red, black and white marbles further explain the dire circumstances the mothers faced, she said. Because the orphanage was so crowded, mothers would have to reach into a bag to draw a marble. If they drew a white marble the baby was accepted, a red meant they could be reconsidered and a black marble, meant they were out.

“It’s where the term blackballed came from,” added Hawksley.

The hardships of life, and war in particular, are prominent themes in Hawksley’s mixed media pieces. Her grandmother, widowed after WWI, was left to raise six children while living in a slum in Portsmouth where she started working for a Naval outfitter making the stiff, boned heavy fabric collars for the naval uniforms, recalled Hawksley.

During World War II, Hawksley was evacuated from the coastal town of Portsmouth after a bomb went through the roof of her family’s home. Her mother stayed with friends and her father slept in the basement of the bombed out home and Hawksley, who was around 10 at the time, was sent to Wales, where she contracted rheumatic fever. The illness caused permanent damage to her heart and her family was delayed in taking her back home due to the battle of Dunkirk. When they finally made it back to Portsmouth, Hawksley said she can remember her parents going from house to house, begging for a bed for her to sleep in to recover from the illness.

After the war, Hawksley said her love of drawing led her to the Royal College of Art, where she wanted to study sculpture, but instead was put into the fashion program.

She taught art in colleges in England, and for a time in Washington, D.C. as well.

Personal tragedy struck again with the loss of an infant who was born with birth defects, and her husband’s suicide, which ultimately resulted in Hawksley having what was called at the time a nervous breakdown, she said.

In the late 1970s, a postgraduate course in textiles at Goldsmiths College sparked her interest in working with embroidery and textiles, she said. In her late 40s at the time, Hawksley became an innovator in the medium, showing the brutality of war and humanity in the delicately embroidered pieces.

Though she was part of the ground-breaking exhibit The Subversive Stitch in 1988, Hawksley said galleries shied away from showing to her work because “they couldn’t hang it on the wall. It’s not pretty, but I have to do it,” she said. “I don’t care if people like it.”

“Captain Coram and Mr. Handel” will be on exhibit through Sept. 21, 2018, at the Maritime Museum at Battleship Cove on Fall River’s waterfront.

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